AUTOSUSPEND(1)

📦
version 10.1.0 · 7 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

✨ AUTOSUSPEND(1) ✨

okay bestie, settle in, because this is the autosuspend man page and honestly?? it's giving "small tool, huge main character energy." it's in section 1 of the manual, and the vibe is immaculate.

💖 NAME 💖

autosuspend — the autosuspend Documentation. yes that's literally the official NAME line, it's short, it's chic, we move on. 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

autosuspend [options] daemon|version [subcommand options]

like… that's the whole shape of it. options, then you pick a subcommand (daemon or version), then any subcommand-specific options. periodt.

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so autosuspend is a daemon that periodically suspends a system when it's inactive, and then — this is the iconic part — wakes it back up automatically when it's needed again. it's literally the friend who lets you nap but shakes you awake the second your food delivery arrives. 🫶

to do this, autosuspend periodically iterates a bunch of user-configurable activity checks. each one reports whether there's currently activity on the host that should stop the host from suspending. if one of the checks says "bestie, we're busy," then no action is taken and the periodic checking just keeps going. 🔁

but if no activity can be detected, that chill state needs to hold for a specified amount of time before autosuspend actually suspends the host. so there's a whole cooldown situation. ⏳

on top of the activity checks, there are also wake up checks, which figure out the system's planned future activities — think a TV recording, or a periodic backup. 👀 if those upcoming activities are known before suspending happens, autosuspend triggers a command to wake the system up automatically before the soonest activity. it's preemptive king behavior, no cap.

if you don't specify a config via a command line argument, autosuspend goes looking for a default configuration at /etc/autosuspend.conf. and autosuspend.conf(5) is where it explains the config file, all the available checks, and their configuration options. go read that one too, iykyk. 📖

👑 OPTIONS 👑

🎀 Command line options 🎀

general syntax, one more time for the people in the back:

autosuspend [options] daemon|version [subcommand options]

✨ General options ✨

  • -h, --help — shows you an online help. classic. we love a help flag. 🙈
  • -c FILE, --config FILE — tells it to use an alternate config file instead of the default /etc/autosuspend.conf. pick your own adventure. 💜
  • -l FILE, --logging FILE — configures the logging system with the logging file you provide. that file has to follow the conventions for Python logging files, described at /usr/share/doc/python3-doc/html/library/logging.config.html#logging-config-fileformat. so like, it's not vibes-only, there's a format. 📝
  • -d — turns on full debug logging, straight from the command line. mutually exclusive to autosuspend -l — you can't have both, bestie, pick a lane. 💀

🧚 Subcommand daemon 🧚

starts the continuously running daemon. the main event. the whole point. 🌟

  • -a, --allchecks — normally autosuspend stops running checks within each iteration the moment the first matching check indicates system activity. if you set this flag, all the subsequent checks still get executed anyway. useful mostly for debugging purposes. it's the "run every check even though we already know" flag. 🔥
  • -r SECONDS, --runfor SECONDS — if you specify this, it doesn't run endlessly. instead it only operates for the given amount of seconds and then exits. again, useful mostly for debugging purposes. very "we're just testing, we'll be done in a sec." ⏱️

🍓 Subcommand version 🍓

outputs the currently installed version of autosuspend to stdout. that's it, that's the whole subcommand. so satisfying actually.

No options — she takes no options. flawless, unbothered, minimal. 💅

💀 BUGS 💀

found a bug? please report it at the project repository at https://github.com/languitar/autosuspend. don't suffer in silence, bestie, the maintainers want to know. 🐛

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

💖 Author 💖

Johannes Wienke

2017, Johannes Wienke

and that's the tea. this page is version 10.1, dated May 09, 2026, and it lives in the autosuspend manual. go forth and suspend responsibly, bestie 🌸✨🦋

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